Biters and Creepers and Lurkers and Walkers and My Throat…Oh My!

From video games to animation to anime to singing toys, your voice is your instrument and you have to take care of it. If you get a call to do a walla session (that is, recording ambient background noise in a scene) for the zombies on The Walking Dead, you can rest assured that it’s going to happen on Friday afternoon, after your voiceover work week. That way you have plenty of time for your throat to rest so you can go back to work on Monday. For years we have gone into voice jobs without the knowledge of them being vocally stressful. And we have come out with painful, sore throats and damaged vocal cords. We’ve affectionately named it “Vocal Bleed”. When that happens, we have to shut down and we lose work. In today’s voice-over climate, vocally stressful work needs to be noted before a session (hopefully) so you can prepare properly. But that prep comes before, during, and after a session. Most VO actors forget the “during” part. In today’s segment, we are going to show you some inside secrets for throat healing that leans heavily on the “during” part. We have tried all of these methods at some point, but are going to do them with you here, while reading some vocally stressful copy.